Orient Express -Choo Choo

Location:Level 1, Food Court (Opposite McDonalds) Crown Melbourne, 8 Whiteman Street, Southbank Vic 3006. ( I know what a freakin mouthful, except no ones talking.. but what a long stupid address)
Phone: 03 9645 9959
Time: around dinner time
Cuisine Type: Japanese/Chinese/ it's meant to be a sushi train type thing (i think they got confused)
Price: you pay for what you eat, and dependent on what colour dish it is, will depend on how much it costs , it can get really pricey (we ate like over $100 worth of food)

What got dished out:
Okay, you guys are going to have to bear with me, literally I took a photo of everything I ate, and there's quite a number of dishes to remember, and i didnt have a pen and paper to remember everything PLUS I ate here some several weeks ago and only decided to upload it now.
I don't even know the names of the food because they just came out from the sushi train thing and we just grabbed whatever came out. Not like I know the official names of food and use it in my food blog anyway. I know I really suck at doing this, but meh.. I'm hoping that you guys aren't using me as a guide to when you go out, because I only have photos, don't remember prices OR names.. sorry!


For the life of me, I can't exactly remember what was inside of these balls. I think they were octopus balls. you them takoyaki rubbish (as you can see i'm not a fan). All I remember was that the skin wasn't as crunchy as it should be. I suspected that it had done the rounds on the train and we just happened to pick it up.




This has to be the worst rice paper roll ever known to man. It clearly had done its round as the paper was dry and the carrots were dry and we were unlucky to pick it up.
Other than the carrot pieces to which you can clearly see it had crab sticks.. oh wait, i think it was prawns. it's not a matter of me forgetting what it was i was eating, no, at the time I didn't even know what the hell it was I was eating as the taste was so blah blah. I've had better, I was disappointed, but what was i expecting? it's a sushi train and there's vietnamese food on it.


By this stage I was ready to give up, 2 bleh bleh dishes, I wasn't all that impressed. Sure it's a tad better than OTHER sushi places but seriously, I wasn't in the mood for rubbish food. And then we picked up the oyster dish. and for some reason it was pretty darn good. It had been cooked in something like an XO sauce and we wanted more. MORE i tell you... but as with most things on sushi trains, you got to wait for more to come.


This wasn't bad either had it been FRESH. However the size of it made it a tad sickening. It's a good thing that I had ONE other person to share my dishes with, because this was way too much for one person to handle.
The mayo dipping sauce made it a tad better. But with anything deep fried, it can't be all THAT great for the heart.




One of the things I always find with Sushi trains is that the fish is never all that fresh and it's nothing that GREAT, and Orient Express is no different. The fish wasn't exactly on the fresh of the freshest side. It was OKAY, it could have been better. Okay I lie, the rice was crap. I mean how could they get it so wrong? I tell you how, the rice simply didn't stick, it wasn't nice. I didn't love it, but it wasn't so bad that I hated it.


I think in future if I ever happen to go to another sushi train or a place that I'm going to order a dozen or so dishes, I'm going to have to write stuff down. I don't remember for the life of me what was exactly in this. My memory of this was it had some curry thing happening for it.
The fact that I don't remember it means it wasn't absolutely fantastic or so bad that it stuck in my memory like an eyesore. I know this food review is sucking even more by the minute.



I was actually impressed, this for whatever reason did come out pretty fresh, obviously it hadn't been sitting around on the train for very long. I was impressed because once upon a time I had something similar and when i took a bite, get this... it was filled with bones and to my disgust i spat the whole thing out. This was nicely cut, it was fresh and had no bones. After that one terrible experience that's what I always look out for: bones. I hate it when there are bones in my fish, nothing peeves me off even more then finding them. and I was glad i got nothing.

This was also another surprise. I've had raw beef before, but a lot of places don't make it all that nicely. yet this was pretty damn good.
I savoured every moment of it, enjoying each piece.
I also had the blondest moment ever when I went to grab this dish, i turned around and said to my friend "can you eat raw meat?" ahahah seriously, if she couldn't we had a huge problems on our hands. I know, silly me.



This has to be the yummiest salad I've had in a while. Granted it had noodles/pasta (whatever it wants to be), mayo and quail eggs, it was an awesome combination. It was good, thinking about it now makes me drool. Someone needs to make this into one big regular dish, and someone needs to sell it to me. Because I'd gladly buy it and eat it and savour every moment of it. Yeh that's right, I'm crazy over some weird pasta salad with quail eggs. Get over it!

This was also another nice surprise. The prawn was freshly cooked, the rice was well cooked, and it just tasted pretty darn good. I've had this at OTHER sushi trains, and to be honest, most places are an absolute disappointment.
This in fact was not.






And it seemed like we were on a roll, dish after dish was getting better and better. and then we had to pick this.
This tuna thing that doesn't have a name.
It was unbelieveably crap, however I'm sure my friend loved it. I don't know what it was about this dish, but i just couldn't warm up to it. And honestly I just wouldn't go near it again. It was just OMG crap, exactly like the first 2 dishes in the beginning. I sat there thinking "OMG, why?!?!?!?"
If you ever had dumplings and you thought the place was crap? Have no fear, this place serves even crappier dumplings than your average crap dumpling place. Think of the worst place you've ever been to, and this place makes it better, i mean worst than what you think could be your worst.
Sure the skin was crispy, sure it was oily but heck the stuffing inside was just WTF. It did not taste good, i just wanted to cry with each bite.

And here I thought to myself, it couldn't possibly get any worse, I mean what could be more terrible than the dumplings I just had. Oh, we soon found out at the next dish I picked up. These weren't all that appetising either. It was just OMG wtf. I don't know what i was expecting, perhaps some little prawns like you get with har gow, or something meaty like a siu mai. Sure it was meaty and had chives on it. but god help me, i couldn't identify if i was eating chicken, beef, pork, could be a koala for all I know. but one things certain, it was an assault on my tastebuds.. and i'm sure they still haven't forgiven me yet.


We assumed this was going to taste like the first oysters we grabbed prior. Oh how wrong we were. This was nothing like the first one. In fact it was way too peppery and frankly if we had had this first, simply put, I would have stayed away from the oysters altogether.
We were surely on a roll, of getting crappy food and it seemed like it was never ending.


However I was glad that we picked up this dish, tempura prawns. It wasn' that bad, perhaps after a stint of crappy food, anything that was average would become absolutely good.
I mean this isn't the same kinda stuff you get at Hako or Tempura Hajime but it was decently okay. Okay, i was just happy to get back to normal tasting food




My thoughts:
If you've never done a sushi train before, let me tell you, it's a FUN experience but it's also a very expensive experience.
There isn't a lot of sushi trains in Melbourne, there's about a handful and most of them are pretty crappy. The standard of food is at times questionable. I know my japanese food, I eat the damn thing all the time. I might not know the names of the stuff shoved down my throat but I know a good dish when I see it.

Orient Express was by far a hit and miss. Some dishes were devine, others brought tears to my eyes due to the sheer awfulness. But Orient Express unlike other Sushi train happen to be the biggest of it's kind, it serves hot and cold food. and it doesn't just stick to Japanese.

One thing I did find was that it PAYS to sit as close as possible to where the food gets distributed onto the train. because the further you sit the likelihood you'll get the leftovers of the stuff nobody wants, plus the food is fresher and much nicer either really cold or really HOT. But it also begs the question.. if the sushi train is the biggest of its kind, surely there are patrons who would lose out as if you're sitting far away from where the food gets put on the train then by the time u get it it's not hot nor cold, as it should be,.

I was also kicking myself when I realised that I could have ordered tea because it was bottomless, and being the true asian i am. I would have gotten my money's worth. I know.. i can't help it, i'm really asian. I think I embarassed my friend. but she'll get over it.

The million dollar question everybody is asking... after that experience, would you go back? Hmmm it's a very interesting question. Realistically, for Japanese food wise, NO.. but for the experience.. definately.
The food quality is pretty inconsistent, hits and misses everywhere, but it's fun watching the food go round and round and round.

Another note... I'm going to try to be as up to date as possible with my food posts because clearly I really suck on TRYING to remember things.. and it makes my blog boring. LOL